Are you looking for ideas to promote workplace health or well-being? Here’s a comprehensive guide featuring top-notch health and wellness initiatives that you can implement immediately. These innovative wellness concepts are perfect for kickstarting or enhancing your existing health programs.
RELATED: 17 Employee Wellness Program Ideas to Increase Engagement
1. Prepare and distribute a list of healthy dining options within a 2-mile radius of your workplace
Many employees travel from different areas to work at the office each day and may not be familiar with nearby dining options. Often, they end up choosing the closest eatery without considering the nutritional value of the food offered.
As a proactive leader, you can address this by mapping out all the dining establishments within a 2-mile radius of your office that offer wholesome meal options. Promoting healthy eating is a crucial aspect of any employee wellness initiative. Consider including a sample of healthy menu items available at these locations to save your team time and help them make informed choices quickly.
You could also go a step further and list examples of some of the healthy food choices that are available at these restaurants. That way, employees won’t have to waste any time guessing what they’re going to order when they get there.
Additionally, it’s helpful to provide clear directions to each restaurant to assist newcomers in navigating the area without trouble. For inspiration, look to Escambia County, Florida, where they’ve taken this idea a step further by curating a list of healthy dining options throughout the county.
2. Provide discounts for healthy foods sold at work
People who aren’t used to eating healthy will typically need an incentive to do so. One big stereotype about health foods that deters people from buying them is their price. If you’ve ever been to a health food store, then you know that health foods are typically priced higher than foods at a local supermarket or restaurant.
Therefore, employers need to make discounted health foods available for sale at work so that their employees will have healthier food options to choose from.
This will also make health foods easier for the employees to purchase without forcing them to drive to a restaurant on their lunch break just to get them. Otherwise, they’ll likely just stay inside their work building and rely on unhealthy vending machines to supply them with food every time they feel hungry and need a quick bite to eat.
3. Review the catering menu and make recommendations for healthy options
Since there is such a variety of foods people like, cafeterias and food courts are great places to implement your workplace health and well-being ideas.
If your company hires caterers that prepare meals for the employees in a cafeteria, then pay particular attention to the catering menu and the food choices that it has. Foods like hamburgers, fries, and pizza should be made available less often.
Tell your caterers that you want to add healthier foods like salads, grilled chicken, egg whites, wheat toast, and so on. You may not be able to get rid of all the unhealthy foods on the menu, but if you add healthier options then people who care about eating healthy will be able to do so.
If your company holds office parties or holiday parties then you should recommend healthier foods to the caterers of those events as well. Try adding variety to the healthier food choices in order to get people interested.
Salads, for example, could be broken up into multiple meal choices. You could have cobb salad, grilled chicken salad, garden salad, Caesar salad, etc. This will make the employees think they have plenty of food options to choose from without feeling deprived of their unhealthy foods.
4. Provide vendor communication materials to encourage healthy holiday gifts from vendors
When the holidays come around, vendors will typically supply companies with unhealthy holiday gifts. These gifts typically include cake, chocolates, cupcakes, and other sugary or fried foods.
Some might make excuses and choose to ignore because it is the holidays. However, the truth is that these foods don’t just show up during the holidays. Employees need to be encouraged to eat healthy all year round, even on holidays.
Employees will probably consume whatever holiday gifts are given to them, whether they are healthy or not. If you can have your vendors supply gifts like fruit baskets, tropical fruit bars, or trail mix, then it will be easier for employees to make healthier choices.
Supply all your vendors with communication materials such as pictures, letters, pamphlets, and infographics which express exactly what you’re looking for. Well-being in the workplace is easier when you have help from vendors.
5. Coordinate community supported agriculture and/or find accessible farmers markets
It often takes a group effort for people to get hooked on fresh produce. Use this website to find local Farmers markets in your area.
The truth is that many communities throughout the country do not have community supported agricultural (CSA) or farmer’s markets where fresh fruits and vegetables can be purchased. That is why a good employer should help lead this effort. If there is currently no agricultural group in your community, go out and start one.
You could post advertisements for the group on your company’s social media pages, website, or as a physical advertisement on the bulletin board in your break room. Ask people to join the group and be a part of the effort to bring more fresh produce to your community.
This could even involve making deals with the closest farmer’s markets and trying to get them to give you a bulk discount deal on purchasing their produce on a regular basis. Perhaps, you could get them to give your employees a discounted rate on their food products as well.
6. Facilitate delivery of fresh fruits and veggies to break room
The break room is the place where employees gather to eat their packed meals or snacks. Sometimes they’ll even head for the vending machine and pick unhealthy junk food—like potato chips or candy bars. Instead of vending machines, have fresh fruits and vegetables periodically delivered to the break room for employees to eat for free.
If that is too expensive, start a healthy food fund where each employee chips in a certain amount of money every month in exchange for fresh produce to be made available to them in the break room anytime they want.
Either way, having fresh fruits and vegetables in the immediate surroundings of employees will encourage them to make healthier snack choices.
7. Start a healthy recipe exchange and potluck lunch
Employees love special events that happen in the workplace. Anything that distracts them from the daily grind of their everyday jobs is a good thing. Take the opportunity to integrate a few special events that will make them healthier.
One arrangement you could make is a potluck lunch where participating employees have to cook a healthy party-sized meal and bring it in for everyone to eat.
You could set it up so each employee submits a healthy recipe that another employee will have to prepare. The decision on which employees cooks the recipes will be from the pick of a hat. Just put the names of every employee in a hat or bag, and then have each employee randomly pick one name from it.
Once they choose a name, the employee will have to cook that person’s healthy recipe. This makes it fun and exciting for the employees while giving them an incentive to eat healthily.
8. Coordinate a “healthy snack of the month” club
The idea of eating the same fruits and vegetables every month gets boring for many people. This could cause your employees to relapse to unhealthy foods. Try adding more variety to the healthy eating choices in your workplace by starting a “healthy snack of the month” club.
Employees who want to participate could submit a few dollars every month in order to join the club. Snacknation offers healthy workplace snacks at a fair price. The benefits for them will be having a new healthy snack being served in the workplace for that month.
Some of the snacks you could use include unsalted mixed nuts, strawberries, celery with fat-free dip, Greek yogurt, dark chocolate, protein bars, and smoothie drinks. Perhaps you could serve one of these snacks on the last day of each week during the course of the month. Then when the next month comes along, switch to a new snack.
9. Arrange for bike racks and provide “bike to work” promotional materials
The type of transportation that employee use to get to work is a big factor for them. While most employees use automobiles, many of them don’t have to. Bicycles are a form of transportation that often gets overlooked by people when they’re going to work.
In Japan and Thailand, bicycling to work is a common practice because it is more affordable than owning and operating an automobile. But for your employees, encouraging them to ride bicycles can be more about keeping them physically healthy rather than just the economics of it.
If you were to pass out “bike to work” promotional materials to your employees and set up bike racks outside of the work facility, perhaps more employees would be motivated to ride a bike to work rather than take their car.
The promotional materials you provide them can include the best places to purchase a bike, where they can park it, and how they can securely lock their bike so that it doesn’t get stolen. If employees feel confident about riding a bike to work, then more of them will do it.
10. Encourage stairwell use by putting up posters in strategic locations
If your office isn’t very tall, your employees might not need to use the elevator to go up a few floors. Encourage them to take the stairs when they’re going up to three floors.
If your employees don’t know where the stairs are, you could put up signs in your building to show the way. These signs should do more than just give directions.
The signs can also show why using the stairs is good for health, like making your heart stronger. You could use pictures and diagrams on these signs to explain how taking the stairs instead of the elevator can help improve heart health.
Seeing these signs every day might make your employees want to try the stairs more often. They’ll feel good about making a healthy choice, too.
11. Arrange for installation of an outdoor multi-sports court
You ever notice how grade schools and colleges have multi-sports courtyards for students and faculty to use? Why aren’t these courtyards integrated into all workplace environments?
If they were, then employees would have a chance to loosen up and relieve their stress by doing something physically productive during their break time. Now, this doesn’t mean that you have to install a gymnasium or big sports arena outside of your workplace.
A multi-sports courtyard only needs to be 1-2 acres in size, and it can be split up into multiple sections for playing different kinds of sports. You can make sections for playing tennis, basketball, badminton, and so on. Once you do this, it will likely make your employees much happier because they’ll get more of a chance to exercise.
This will cause the endorphins to be released, which will naturally relieve their stress. Anytime you have happier employees, the quality of their work will improve and productivity in the company will be increased. This might be the most expensive health and well-being idea, but if your company has the resources, it may become the most popular.
12. Negotiate corporate discounts for health club memberships
Many corporations these days are partnering with various health clubs in their community so that their employees can get discounts on memberships if they were to join one of these facilities. Employees love to receive discounts on products and services, even if they aren’t something they would have purchased for themselves before.
If there is an employee who has been thinking about joining a health club but doesn’t want to because it costs too much money every month, then the employee discount will give them an extra incentive toward actually getting them to join the club.
Some of these discounts are fairly substantial as well. While regular members might have to pay $20 to $30 per month, most corporate discounts give employees the chance to join for $10 or less per month. Who wouldn’t want to join a gym and improve their health for such little money?
We partnered with WellSteps when we knew how important it was to prioritize the health and well-being of our employees. The workplace health and well-being ideas, tools and resources that they provide helps us to ensure that our wellness program is not only meaningful and effective, but that it makes a difference in our employees’ lives.
Cassie Scott
Human Resources Administrator
Fransen Pittman
13. Provide training on the process of holding walking meetings
The idea of conducting meetings while walking may seem laughable to some people. Traditionally, corporate meetings have always been held in offices, conference rooms, or board rooms where all the attendees are sitting down.
But new studies have shown that taking walks while conducting important business meetings can actually increase the creative thought process of all parties involved.
So, train your lower-level managers on how to conduct these walking meetings with their employees and clients. Naturally, you don’t want to surprise people with walking meetings because you may have clients or employees that are not physically able to participate, or they may not be dressed appropriately, especially if you go outside.
The best way to arrange these meetings is to conduct them in small groups and request approval from all the attendees ahead of time. You don’t even have to emphasize the health value of walking meetings all that much. Just talk about the benefits it provides such as mental clarity, enhancing creative thinking, and less stress or nervousness.
14. Post maps for outdoor walking routes or trails
If the location of your company is near a lot of outdoor trails and walking routes, let your employees know about it by posting maps of these routes on the indoor and outdoor walls of your building.
Since a lot of employees like to take walks around the parking lot on their lunch break, give them a better option by letting them know about other areas where they can walk on their break. If the outdoor trail lies on the company’s property, you can post up maps along the trail as well, so the employees don’t get lost while trying to come back to work.
Also, post reminders at the beginning of the trail for people to bring their cell phones with them. This will allow them to call for help just in case they get lost on the trail! This is one of the most helpful and least expensive employee well-being activities for the workplace you can try. Here is a video to help you create walking maps with Google Maps.
15. Coordinate and communicate running and walking clubs
Work environments need to encourage exercise as much as possible. This doesn’t just mean having employees do stretches or brief walks on their breaks. You need to have your company create or partner up with running and walking clubs.
After you do that, notify all the employees about these running and walking clubs. Let them know how they can join these clubs and then give them a schedule of the times and locations where club members will meet for a group run or walk.
People are often motivated to exercise when they have others around them doing the same thing. Running and walking clubs are great for employees because it gives them a chance to better their health and it also allows them to meet more people who have a similar interest as them.
You can coordinate these club get-togethers through your company’s social media accounts or by sending out paper memos to all employees within the company. Here are some great resources to help you start.
16. Start a smoke-free policy for work and provide cessation resources
We all know tobacco smoke is unhealthy for a variety of reasons. Not only is the smoker hurting their own health, but they are also hurting the health of those around them through secondary smoke.
Most companies have tried to solve this problem by creating designated smoking areas within the building where employees are allowed to smoke. However, this is not good enough because the employees who are smoking are still damaging their health. This, in turn, degrades their overall performance in the workplace.
That is why a smoke-free policy needs to be issued throughout the entire workplace with no designated smoking areas whatsoever. On top of that, cessation materials need to be made freely available to employees, By so doing you help teach them how to quit smoking altogether.
You don’t have to force it on them, just make it readily available to all in case they do want to quit. Among the different workplace health and well-being ideas, this one can be challenging for smokers.
Communicate your intentions clearly and often. Make sure all your employees know they are valuable contributors to your worksite’s success. Here is a great resource to get your smoke-free policy up and running.
California has made it easier to quit and much harder to smoke than just about any other state. They have created a culture of health at home and in the workplace. This, makes it is much easier to avoid tobacco.
To see similar results at your employee health and well-being initiatives, you need to start by creating a healthy culture.
What to Expect-Reasonably
But, don’t expect improvements in employee health and healthcare cost savings. The WellSteps well-being platform uses these same health and well-being at work ideas. But, we integrate them into a strategy that is not only measurable and incentivized but is also effective.
When you incorporate these workplace health and well-being ideas into an organized and structured program, you will improve employee health and reduce healthcare costs. Done right, it looks like this.
These workplace health and well-being ideas are designed to change policy and improve the work environment. These ideas make it is easier for employees to adopt and maintain health behaviors.
FAQs About Workplace Health and Well-Being Ideas
How do you promote health and wellbeing in the workplace?
- Get a letter of leadership support and post it for employees to see
- Recognize employees who are doing well at company meetings
- Provide educational materials on the benefits of healthy living
- Offer insurance discounts or other benefits
- Offer standing desks
- Create posters to help employees remember to make healthy choices
What are examples of good wellness activities?
- Group sessions (yoga, cardio, stretching, etc.)
- Host a Lunch and Learn on certain wellness topics
- Create step challenges with a prize for the winner
- Start a company garden
Have little or no well-being program budget? That’s okay. Many of these workplace health and well-being ideas are low cost. You can find even more low-cost workplace health and well-being ideas and activities in this article.
